Originally broadcast on "The Protestant Hour" on July 5, 1981

1981 marks the 200th anniversary of the end of the American Revolution. So the textbooks will tell you. The Revolutionary War ended on October 20, 1781 at Yorktown. But there are others who contend that the revolution didn't end there at all. In fact, it was only getting started. It must continue. They contend shaping a more equitable society that recognizes for all certain inalienable rights, such as life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. There may be something to this.

Someone has paraphrased the 11th chapter of Hebrews after this fashion:

“By faith, the voyaging Mayflower embarked from old England and found harbor off the bleak New England shores. By faith, the Pilgrim Fathers set up a government on a new continent dedicated to God and inspired by a desire to do his will. By faith, Thomas Jefferson was stirred to strike a blow for political independence and wrote the thrilling document that declared that ‘all men are created equal and endowed with certain inalienable rights.’ By faith, he said, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself and your country more than yourself.’ By faith, George Washington left his spacious mansion at Mount Vernon and espoused the cause of the tax-burdened colonists. By faith, he forsook ease and comfort, choosing rather to suffer hardship with his men at Valley Forge than to enjoy the favor of the king. By faith, he became the president of the newly born Republic and endured as seeing him who is invisible. By faith, Alexander Hamilton established the financial credit of the nation. In the eloquent words of Daniel Webster, ‘He touched the corpse of public credit and it sprang into life. He smote the rock of national resources and abundant streams of revenue flowed.’ By faith, James Madison gave richly of his scholarly mind to form the federal constitution. By faith, Andrew Jackson fought the battle of the impoverished and underprivileged many against the privileged few. What shall I more say? For time would fail me if I should tell that unnumbered host the unnamed and obscure citizens who bore unimagined burdens, sacrificed in silence and endured nobly that a government of the people, by the people and for the people might not perish from the earth.”

It is appropriate on this anniversary weekend of our nation's life that we remember with gratitude those people who gave of themselves so faithfully that this country might come to birth. But as we recall that fateful blow for liberty that was struck more than 200 years ago and the revolution completed just 200 years ago that made it stick, we would do well to see the wider context in which it all took place. What I would suggest is that when we have been indeed a people under God, we have sensed the revolution of his gracious love, and this has shaped what we have become.

Now, of course, there have been many factors at work -- political, economic, social -- but there has also been the spiritual factor, which is the encompassing one. And to understand what we celebrate on this holiday weekend, it must be taken into account. One of the parables of Jesus helps us to see it. Jesus said, “The kingdom of God is like a grain of mustard seed, which, when sown upon the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth. Yet when it is sown, it grows up and becomes the greatest of all shrubs and puts forth large branches so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade.” God's rule comes from small beginnings, but it grows and persists until it provides shelter, protection and life sustaining care. Now, within the overarching context of God's coming Kingdom, there are the kingdoms of this earth, the governments of the world. Human government tends to get stuck on dead center, becoming institution-serving, rather than people-serving. Against this sin induced inertia, this down drag of our human nature, God's revolutionary love, keeps pressing for change to meet human needs. America was born as people here sensed this revolutionary love and submitted to it.

During the Bicentennial celebration, I read the John Jakes Bicentennial series of books. They are lively, spicy volumes, which would lead you to believe that the sex and violence themes of television are no new American preoccupation but have always been prominent in our experience, and probably it is so. Yet through all of this, other truths come through. One is the slow mustard seed growing kind of awareness that developed as people in the harsh, depersonalized, inhumane 18th century monarchical system sensed the revolution that was taking place. First in their thinking that it was not right for a man to be treated like property or for a man to be despised because of class or any other condition, that there are rights inherent in the very fact of being a human being. And then in their actions as they translated those radical thoughts into radical documents like the Declaration of Independence.

Professor William E Hocking of Harvard has put this revolution in thinking in very clear terms. He points out that there are no rights of man that are not grounded in the conception of the divine value of man, which is best seen in God's gracious love. There are no so-called rights of man based on reason that are not at the mercy of opportunism. If they are merely based on considerations of social health when these conceptions change, as they did violently in the Nazi and communist regimes, the rights are left without foundation. The churches are the trustees of the only principle that can support the rights of man. The principle rooted in the Christian faith, which recognizes the worth of all persons as children of God. These changes in thinking came as our forefathers out of their faith since the revolution of God's coming kingdom of grace and the changes it required. One of our great American preachers has expressed it well. We Americans say that the Constitution made the nation. Well, the Constitution is a great document, and we never would have been a nation without it. But it took more than that to make the nation. Rather, it was our forefathers and our foremothers who made the Constitution and then made it work. The government they constructed did get great things out of them, but it was not the government primarily that put great things into them. What put great things into them was their home life, their religion, their sense of personal responsibility to almighty God, their devotion to education, their love of liberty, their personal character. When their government pumped it drew from profound depths in the lives of men and women, where creative spiritual forces had been at work.

It is essential, not only for us as individuals, but also for us as a nation, that this reservoir of creative spiritual forces continue to run deep and long. One of the primary springs that feeds this reservoir is the word of God, His Word made flesh in Jesus Christ, his word made scripture in the holy Bible, His word made visible in the holy sacraments, and his word made personal in the lives of the people of God, the holy Christian church. Here we encounter God's revolutionary love most clearly as we see His all out concern for all people, from the least to the greatest, willing to spend itself utterly for their sakes. If we in America would remain free and strong and serviceable, we must constantly learn of His love, be informed by His grace and directed by his word.

For though we celebrate the 200th anniversary of the completion of the Revolutionary War this year, there is a sense in which the revolution has never ended and must never end. There is always need for change that squares more truly with God's gracious love. Many needs are pressed upon us in our day, the needs of women, of minorities, of the poor, of our environment and so on. We need to remain sensitive to the restlessness of our God in his world. And there is no more acute sensitizer than our God in his word, the living word, Jesus Christ, whose life was graciously poured out in love that the sins of all might be forgiven and the woes of all might be healed. Paul describes this revolutionary love in the fifth chapter of Romans, where he writes, “While we were still weak, at the right time, Christ died for the ungodly. Why one will hardly die for a righteous man, though perhaps for a good man, one will even dare to die. But God shows His love for us in that while. While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.”

This is revolutionary love indeed that asks not what does one deserve, but only what does one need. It goes beyond justice to mercy that walks humbly with the redeeming Lord as His presence with us gains more and more control over our thoughts, decisions and actions we sense more clearly the continuing revolution, which, like the quietly growing mustard seed, presses God's kingdom upon the kingdoms of this earth. As long as there are human beings in our nation and our world, there will be sin and wickedness, and just that long, there will be the need for God's revolutionary love to correct and direct what we do. May we always be alert to that need and sensitive to the changes which he inspires.

One of the American classics is Washington Irving's sketchbook and his story of Rip Van Winkle. There's something in that story that you may not have thought about before, and that is the sign on the inn in the little town on the Hudson from which Rip went up into the mountains for his long sleep. When he went up, the sign had a picture of George, the third of England. When he came down, it had a picture of George the first of America, first in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen. Rip looking at that picture of George Washington was completely lost. The incident suggests that the most striking thing about the story of Rip Van Winkle was not that he slept twenty years, almost anyone could do that, but that he slept through a revolution. While he was peacefully snoring up in the mountains, there had been a great turnover, which completely changed the face of the world. But Rip did not know anything about it. He had been asleep. There is always that grave danger for us sleeping through the revolution, especially when the revolution comes like a quietly growing mustard seed.

As a people under God, there is nothing more critical for us than that we be sensitive to the revolution, to what God, whose radical love is experienced in word and sacrament, is doing around and within us here in America in 1981. The closing words of a familiar hymn cast this yearning into prayer: “America, America, God shed his grace on thee and crown thy good with brotherhood from sea to shining sea.” Deepen and purify within us O Lord, true and enlightened love of country, a love that rejoices in beauty and ever seeks to preserve it, a love that could fill our land with happy homes, a love that will not rest until it has removed the stain of hopeless poverty and cured the blindness which passes it by, a love that is sensitive to the changes which human dignity, human rights and human welfare require. In the name of Him who wept over His beloved Jerusalem, may we strive to make our country more responsive to His love, who with you and the Holy Spirit ever lives one God, world without end, Amen. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be With You. Amen.